U.S. Denies Seoul Commitment on Kim and Americans

There was never a commitment from the South Korean government that two congressmen and a former U.S. ambassador could personally accompany opposition leader Kim Dae Jung and his wife through customs in Seoul and to their home there, a State Department spokesman, Brian Carlson, said Sunday.

He spoke in response to an accusatory statement issued Sunday in Seoul by a delegation of Americans that traveled with the Kims on their return Friday.

The statement, signed by Reps. Edward F. Feighan (D-Ohio) and Thomas M. Foglietta (D-Pa.) and by Robert E. White, a former ambassador to El Salvador, said that the government of President Chun Doo Hwan manhandled Kim and members of the delegation as a premeditated act, violating promises of good treatment.

Feighan asserted that Harriet Isom, chief of the State Department’s Korea desk, and David Straub, a Korea desk officer, had given assurances before the party left Washington that three members of the delegation would be allowed to accompany the Kims through customs and to their home.

Carlson said Sunday, “As we understood it, Congressmen Feighan and Foglietta and Ambassador White were to accompany the Kims to their home, but in a separate car after the Kims had gone through customs separately.”

He repeated Friday’s State Department statement that the Korean government failed to keep a commitment that U.S. Embassy officials in Seoul would be allowed to meet the plane.

Another breakdown of the advance plan, Carlson said, was that a South Korean Foreign Ministry official either did not board the plane in Tokyo as he was scheduled to do, or, if he did, failed to inform the Americans that they could not stay with the Kims through the airport procedures and accompany them home in the same vehicle.

On Friday, the State Department formally protested the “regrettable events” at the airport.